Why don’t people listen to us when we talk to them? Why to we have to endlessly keep telling them what to do? Why must we feel that we are loosing control and respect? If you took a closer look at who is doing all the talking and who is doing all the listening, you will probably notice that the speaker, though well intentioned, is actually robbing the listener of their words. In doing so, the listener either turns off or feels that the speaker is treating them like a child. Both situations often result in frustrating and angry confrontations because each party feels like their words have lost power. This concept is best exemplified by the following story.

Military Dad Story

A father came into the office to discuss problems he was having with his child. We noted that the child had a great vocabulary for his age and was able to express himself well on matters pertaining to academic subjects. Given this impressive academic knowledge, one would expect the child be able to use those skills to monitor his own behavior and/or manage social situations. These areas, however, seemed to be very difficult for the child. We then decided to probe why this was happening and the father noted that when he spoke to his son, he tended to give directions as well as constantly explain concepts, problems and solutions needed to succeed in life.

When asked why the father talked so much to his child he noted that he was brought up with a military father who tended to dictate to his children and that was the only role-model that this father had to help him address his personal issues with his own son. We discussed possible strategies to help his son solve his own problems and come to his own solutions. First of all, I suggested using more questions rather than simply telling his son what he should do. The conversation that follows is an example of how Dr. O taught the dad how to use the Ask, Don’t Tell strategy:

Dad: I tend to tell my kids what to do because it saves time and I feel that they need to know specifically what needs to be done as well as how to do it.

Dr. O: You can continue to tell your children what do to but, after you have set down your goals and expectations of what to do in a certain situation, the next step is asking them questions rather than giving them the answers.

Dad: That is going to take too much time and I can’t spend my time thinking before I speak – especially when I am angry.

Dr. O: Good point. Let’s talk about how the brain learns so that your understanding will then provide evidence of how ones own language helps their brain develop.

I went to the white board and drew a cell, which looked like a balloon with a long tail on it and a few cobweb-like structures growing from that long tail. Beside that picture, I drew another balloon-like figure but, with many cobweb-like structures growing from that structure. Then I told them the following story that I read in Robert Sylwester’s book.

A celebration of neurons: An educator’s guide to the human brain (ASCD 1995, pp. 128).

Sylwester discusses Marion Diamond’s (1988) work on brain development. Rats were used in the study because they found them to resemble those of the human brain. He noted the following:

The basic research design (with variations) compares the brains of rats that have lived in different environments for differing periods of time: (1) rats living alone in a small, unfurnished cage, (2) a group of 12 to 36 rats living together in a large laboratory cage that contains a regularly changed and stimulating collection of toys and other objects to explore, and (3) a group of rats living in a much larger outdoor, seimnatural rat habitat. Most of the research has focused on conditions 1 and 2.

As one may expect, the researchers found that the best cortex development emerged from the social and environmental stimulation of the rat’s natural habitat, followed by the enriched social cage, followed at a significantly lower level by the impoverished solitary environment.

The socially oriented seminatural and enriched laboratory settings produce a thicker and heavier cortex: larger neurons, more and better interneural connections, and a greater supply of glial support cells. These elements create a potentially better brain for learning and remembering, defined in rats by their ability to run mazes. (128)

As noted from Sylwester’s example of brain development, human brains are social and in need of opportunities to solve problems; more specifically, their own problems. Given this opportunity throughout the day and continued over the years, children can then grow up to use their daily “thinking” opportunities to solve their own problems. They can come up with diverse ways to look at situations that, if they had never had the opportunity to work through at the moment of happening, would result in a text-book type situation. Most of us have experienced these text-book situations where the teacher tells us about a topic. We take notes based on his or her words and study that information for a test. After the test, we usually have no memory of what we studied one week after we learned it. This happens because we never talked about the information or made it ours; therefore, our brain forgot it because it was not deemed important.

The military father learned from our discussion and he stopped talking to his son and listened to what his son responded to his questions. By doing so, he provided his son opportunities throughout the day to use his own brain to solve problems and discuss his findings.